The Raptors had a day off on Monday to recharge and think about how to get a brutal-looking offence on track.

Asking tigers to change their stripes will get you nowhere — Kyle Lowry is not suddenly going to become a lover of the pick-and-roll game, Rudy Gay and DeMar DeRozan aren’t going to double their attempts from long-range or pass like Ricky Rubio — but even a few adjustments should help the team immensely.

Top scorers Gay and DeRozan take more shots than any other combo in the league, yet are shooting just 38% and 40% from the field, respectively. They are averaging 38.5 shots a night between them, but only seven of them come from behind the three-point line and they average just 4.3 assists a night.

Though it’s early, Gay, DeRozan and Lowry each are posting true shooting percentages far below their career norms. True shooting percentage is a measure of shooting efficiency that takes into account attempts from two-point and three-point range and from the line.

The only reason Toronto sits smack in the middle of the pack in offensive rating (points scored per 100 possessions) is because the club has done stellar work on the offensive glass cleaning up the many misses (leading the NBA with 154 offensive rebounds so far).

Dwane Casey would like his club to play differently, but it’s unclear if that will be possible, with so many bad habits entrenched in their basketball DNA already.

“We’ve got to play our game offensively. Attack the paint. Push the ball in transition as much as possible; we got open threes we’ve got to take them. Can’t settle for fadeaway jump shots, we have to be aggressive, strong, attack the feet (of opposing players),” Casey said before Sunday’s overtime loss to the Portland Trail Blazers.

The Raptors did attack inside, collecting 62 points in the paint to Portland’s 28, but didn’t particularly push the ball (not a huge surprise, since the club sits second to last in pace) and opted for two-pointers over threes, open or not. The fadeaway jump shots came in bunches, most egregiously, when DeRozan settled for a near-impossible fade with three defenders right on him late in the third quarter.

Casey wants a different approach. “We’d like to get more of a balance in the distribution,” he said post-game. But he’s also a realist. His bench doesn’t move the ball either and though a Dwight Buycks-Terrence Ross-Quincy Acy combination with Steve Novak being kicked out as a trailer could be an intriguing, quick group, but to this point, Buycks has been reluctant to get out and run.

“We have to play according to our personnel, everybody would love to push it (but) we have a pace that fits our personnel,” Casey said, before adding that: “Of course I would love to get more baskets earlier in the clock.”

For whatever reason, Lowry is no longer playing to one of his main strengths — attacking early and often. Lowry was either first or second in assists on Houston squads that placed sixth, eighth and 11th in pace between 2009-2012.

Gay seems confident that things will turn around on offence and takes solace in the team’s good work defensively overall so far.

“The thing about it is that when the ball isn’t going in, we have to pick it up somewhere. We picked it up on the defensive end. We moved. We scrambled. We helped each other. Our younger guys are getting smarter on the defensive end,” Gay said Sunday.

He is sure the offence will improve in terms of getting more movement, more shots in the hoop and a better flow as the season goes along.

Time will tell, but one thing he likely is correct about is more shots falling. Gay is shooting about 10% worse than his career averages in most areas close to the hoop. Once the numbers even out there on those easier attempts, his overall shooting percentage should start to look a lot more palatable.

The rest of the time, Gay and DeRozan are going to need to find a way to spot teammates for better looks. Otherwise, we’ll be looking at some historically bad offensive metrics between them.

WHERE THEY STAND

A comparison through 11 games to selected full-season stats the Raptors posted last year.

Raptors stars are shooting blanks

The Raptors had a day off on Monday to recharge and think about how to get a brutal-looking offence on track.

Asking tigers to change their stripes will get you nowhere — Kyle Lowry is not suddenly going to become a lover of the pick-and-roll game, Rudy Gay and DeMar DeRozan aren’t going to double their attempts from long-range or pass like Ricky Rubio — but even a few adjustments should help the team immensely.

Top scorers Gay and DeRozan take more shots than any other combo in the league, yet are shooting just 38% and 40% from the field, respectively. They are averaging 38.5 shots a night between them, but only seven of them come from behind the three-point line and they average just 4.3 assists a night.

Though it’s early, Gay, DeRozan and Lowry each are posting true shooting percentages far below their career norms.